food sandwiched between hospital and home life

08/01/201508/01/2015

Bradshaw Breakfast Bread

This idea was introduced to me by my good friend Jamie, who tells me that it’s a bit of family tradition for him – especially if they are going sailing. I have to agree that this is an excellent loaf for traveling or a picnic. Everyone gets a chunk with an egg, some bacon and sausage! And why stop there, you could put something else in if you wished. I was thinking about a chicken tika version!?

Turn on the oven to the hottest setting (280c in mine). I have a baking stone which I put on a rack at the bottom of my oven and allow it to heat up with the oven. It takes about 1 hr to get the stone to the same temp as the oven.

Grill or fry the bacon to your preference of crispness. Grill or fry the sausages as well. Set aside the bacon and sausages. Set a pan of water to boil. Once the water is boiled, add the eggs and boil for 7 minutes; then remove from the heat and set aside and allow them to cool enough for you to handle them. Carefully peel the eggs – take care as hopefully, the yolks will still be soft.

Cut the sausages into bite sized chunks and do the same with the bacon rashers.

Turn out the dough, after the first rise, onto a well oiled surface and make sure your hands are quite well oiled as well. Push and flatten the dough out into a large rectangle. Along the long axis of the rectangle, closest to you, place the 6 eggs in a row. Behind the eggs, evenly spread the bacon pieces across the length of the bread and do the same with the sausage.

Roll the bread lengthways, so that the dough folds over the eggs and forms a sort of Swiss-roll with the bacon and sausage as the filling between the layers. You will end up with a long log of bread dough with the eggs at regular intervals along it’s length and the bacon and sausage evenly distributed throughout it.

I always find that the bread is too long to fit in my oven easily, so I form it into a ring and roughly join the two ends. Slide the ring onto a silicone baking sheet and loosely cover with an oiled sheet of cling film. Allow it to double in size again, probably about 30mins more.

When it’s ready, see if you can identify where the eggs are places and cut slashes in between them. This makes the final bread look pretty, allows the bread to expand evenly and tells you where to cut the loaf so that each person gets an egg! If you can’t see where the eggs are, make about 6 evenly spaced slashes around the bread anyway!

Slide the bread onto the baking stone in the oven and bake for about 20-30mins. Turn the oven temp down to 200c after the 1st 10mins.

Remove from the oven and allow it to cool on a rack for about 20mins before serving.